Post-game quotes from Seahawks coach Pete Carroll

Here’s everything that Seattle head coach Pete Carroll had to say after the Super Bowl tonight:

(on the game) “Boy this is a hard thing to take, and I know that there are so many people on the outside, the 12s, our fans and the people that love us so much and the people that follow us so closely. I hope they can only imagine how it hurts our players that have worked and done so much and put so much forth to be champions today. The coaches, the families and all that stuff, everybody feels it. Let me just tell you what happened because as you know, the game comes right down and all the things that happened before are meaningless to you now. It’s really what happened on this one sequence that we would have won the game, we have everything in mind, how we’re going to do it, we’re going to leave them no time, and we had our plays to do it. We sent in our personnel, they sent in goalline, it’s not the right matchup for us to run the football, so on second down we throw the ball really to kind of waste that play. If we score we do, if we don’t, then we’ll run it in on third and fourth down. Really, with no second thoughts or no hesitation in that at all. And unfortunately, with the play that we tried to execute, the guy makes a great play and jumps in front of the route and makes an incredible play that nobody would ever think he could do. And unfortunately that changes the whole outcome. So I told the guys in the locker room that they’re a great team and they fought to prove that, and they did everything to do that again tonight. And they’re on the precipice of winning another championship, and unfortunately, the play goes the other way. There’s really nobody to blame but me, and I told them that clearly. And I don’t want them to think anything other than that. They busted their tails and did everything they needed to do to put us in position, and unfortunately it didn’t work out. A very, very hard lesson. I hate to learn the hard way, but there’s no other way to look at it right now. Unfortunately that’s what happens. So what do you want to know?”

(on if that play was his decision) “Yes.”

(on the coverage on that play) “Really the way the route generally works is the back receiver gets shielded off so that the play can get thrown to the guy trailing. And it’s worked really well, it’s been a really nice concept but they jumped it, did a fantastic job. I don’t know if they prepared to do that or he did it on his own, but it was a great play.”

(was that a predetermined pass play) “No, okay, I’ll tell you again if you want to hear again. Here’s the deal, we sent our guys on the field, wide receivers on the field, spread them out, they ran on their goal line, they sent all their big guys out there. At that moment I didn’t want to waste a run play against their goalline guys. Throw the ball, we’ll come in on third and fourth down, and we can match up. It’s a really clear thought, it wasn’t something that happened, it was a clear thought but it didn’t work out right. We happened to throw them the ball, and they make a big play.”

(on if Russell Wilson is coached up on that play to throw it away if nothing is there) “We have coached up that thinking forever. In that situation, it was not told to him, I don’t remember hearing that said to him. But we’re so in-sync, and we understand what’s going on. That’s a play that’s supposed to work versus the two guys covering one-on-one, and the guy jumped underneath and made the play.”

(on not using Marshawn Lynch while he had the defense on their heels) “It’s just because of the matchups. At this time it seems like overthinking, but they have goalline guys on, we have three wide receivers, a tight end and one back, in that situation, they’ve got extra guys at the line of scrimmage. So we don’t want to waste a run play at that.”

(on if he expected a New England timeout) “No, no I wasn’t expecting him to do anything at the time.”

(on what he said to Russell Wilson after the game) “We just looked at each other trying to realize the gravity of what we just witnessed. We didn’t say very much. We have a tremendous understanding. I know he’s doing everything he can possibly do, which is what I was doing, everything we could possibly do to win the football game.”

(on clarification of seeing the run defense going into game making him call the pass play) “Yeah, I just told them ‘Make sure, let’s throw it here.’ We’ll run on third and fourth down.”

(on the emotional swing, and how it affects him) “It really hasn’t hit yet. I’m not in that position where I can do that. I can’t go there. I’ve got to be in charge of what’s going here. I can’t go there.”

(on the last offensive play) “I understand, I know you have a million questions about this, and I’ll answer them, it’s really ok, I understand why you’re asking, so I’ll try to answer them the best I can for you.”

(on if Marshawn Lynch and the offensive line understood the call that was made) “You’re a classic example of what I understand. That’s not what’s going on right now. We decided to call another call. We make these decisions every game all the time. They work out sometimes and they don’t other times. This one didn’t work out right for us. We could have run it and got stuffed, we could run it and scored, we could have scored against their goal line as well. I know that could’ve happened. It just wasn’t a great football thought at the time. Great football is let’s make sure we match up properly so we can have our best chance to run it in and score. In retrospect, we could have easily run it, and we wouldn’t be talking about this. We might have got stuffed on third and fourth down. I don’t know. This is what happened.”

(on if he ran receivers in after the defense was on the field) “No, before. Before. We were already on the field, we sent them out right away and then they ran out on the field.”

(on that being a good defense to run that play against) “Yeah, it was a really good play. The consequence doesn’t match here. It is a really good play when they don’t have their guys to cover us.”

(on the positives he can take out of this) “Great season, great football season, great team, and they played like a great team throughout this season and unfortunately we have to live with this. That doesn’t take anything away from that fact. They played with great heart, great intensity, great love for one another and that’s why we were in this position to win this football game.”

(on if there was anything Russell Wilson could have done to get out of the play) “All he could have done is thrown the other way to the other side with the route. But he had what he was looking for, the guy makes a phenomenal play that guys aren’t supposed to make, he just jumped into the route.”

(on getting back to this game with offseason contract situations) “It’s a similar situation to last year. Everybody has difficult decisions you have to make this time of year. They’ll come up in time. How we’ll make it back is one day at a time. One day at a time.”

(on who made the call on the last play) “I made it. I made the decision. I said ‘throw the ball.’ So we went to the play we thought would give us a chance to get in the end zone. We had great matchups in that regard with that route, the call that we made. But it didn’t work out. They made a better play than we did. That’s going to happen.”

(on the Patriots play in the fourth quarter) “They had two great drives and they controlled the ball going down the field. Really we didn’t make any major mistakes, they just really played well enough to get the ball down the field. Tom [Brady] did a great job to engineer the win. That’s it, they’re a great football team. They played like they were capable of playing.”

(on after the miracle catch to put them close to the end zone) “Everything was perfectly in hand, we were just talking about the time and timeouts and how we were going to give them no time to come back.”

(on calling a timeout after the long pass) “Yeah, on the big play, we didn’t get rallied fast enough you know and the clock ran down on us.”

(on if they would have put a fullback out in the formation) “It would have been fine, but they changed their personnel. They did a nice job. They changed their personnel, so that’s why we threw the ball so we wouldn’t get outmatched.”

(on what they tried to do against Rob Gronkowski) “Everything that we always do, all of our changeups. They caught us one time, they did a great job. They got us one time outside and we tried to keep that from happening but that one ball got us.”

(on disappointment in the fight and a player getting ejected from game at the end) “Yeah, that’s unfortunate. That’s a mess. Nobody needed to see that. That’s just emotions and stuff like that. It’s too bad that showed up.”

(on not using goal line personnel on that play) “We don’t do that very often. We rarely do that.”